


Make a list of things you need

by longnationalnightmare



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Fake Marriage, M/M, Morons, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-29 07:49:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14468196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnationalnightmare/pseuds/longnationalnightmare
Summary: “Whose wedding?” he asked, and only stopped assessing the room when Eliot failed to answer. “El, who’s getting married?”





	Make a list of things you need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jenga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenga/gifts).



> written with much love for the beautiful & incomparable jenga t. ower, for her birthday, late, bc i know she'd expect nothing less. hope you like this trope soup that i made for you! thanks as always to drunktuesdays for cheerleading/taskmastering and to kalpurna for the generous but ruthless beta. next time i'll write a genuine historical au and THEN we'll see what you do with me.
> 
> a few notes on the story's relationship to book/tv show canon: ehhhh. i'm fully watched and read but you should probably read this story as an altish universe of both in which the beast-related plots of the first book/season wrapped up less, ah, violently, and now quentin/eliot/margo/alice are enjoying a spell of ruling fillory WITHOUT the end of magic/the world/all personal happiness looming over them. although i did forget to include alice as a character in this story. not maliciously. i assume she's off working somewhere & is gonna show up after the fact like "what happened while i was gone? don't care." anyway i think that's everything. it's tropey nonsense! enjoy.

_“If I get married, I want to be very married.” - Audrey Hepburn_

It’s not that Quentin had consciously expected a great fuss to be made upon his return. He wasn’t holding out for a parade, or a royal trumpet fanfare. Eliot and Margo and Alice weren’t the kind of people who’d think to organize anything like that.

 _Sub_ consciously, though, he must have expected to be greeted with _something_. He’d been wandering alone in the wilderness for over a month—surely _one_ of his self-centered friends must have said, even once, even idly, “Where the hell is Quentin? I wish he’d come home already.”

Surely someone had _missed_ him.

And there were lookouts in every tower of Whitespire; surely also one of them ought to have spotted Quentin as he hiked wearily up the long, winding road to the arched palace doors. Dirt-encrusted he might be—dressed plainly and limping a little (pulled tendon; not much of a war wound, he reflected glumly)—but _still_. He was a king of Fillory. That had to shine through somehow. If his own guards couldn’t recognize him and sound his return—well, what were they being paid for?

If they _were_ being paid, that is. Well, Quentin didn’t handle that kind of thing. Not his circus.

In fact, though, nobody noticed him at all as he made his way through the castle gates and up the long approach to the building itself. It was a busy day at Whitespire—maybe the busiest he’d ever seen. The road was crowded with swarms of merchants leading horses laden with bolts of rich fabric; guards in their dress uniforms; winesellers rolling big barrels ahead of them, grunting and bracing themselves against the incline. And Quentin spotted a troupe of acrobats, too, and what looked like a delegation of—Lorians? what were they doing here?—and carts upon carts of food: huge bags of grain, baskets of delicately fringed mushrooms, mountains of bread and glistening apples—

Maybe there _was_ going to be a celebration for him after all, Quentin thought optimistically. But he made it all the way to the throne room without a single sidelong look.

Eliot and Margo were both in there, but so was about half the palace. Margo was giving a woman in a chef’s hat the reaming of a lifetime—she managed to look like she was wearing a headset, even though it was just her crown, as usual—and Eliot was braced against a huge wooden table in front of the thrones, inspecting an enormous scroll that had been weighted at all four corners to keep it flat. “Your Majesty,” a squat man in state livery was saying nervously, “about the question of….”

“The bear was awarded a royal medal of distinguished service,” Eliot said. “I’m not moving him to another table just because someone feels ‘uncomfortable’ about watching him eat live fish.”

He glanced up, then, and caught sight of Quentin. “Thank God,” he said abruptly, and was striding across the room before Quentin could even work up some kind of snarky line about being—basically _invisible_ in his own _palace—_ it didn’t matter anymore. Eliot was hugging him, one of those deep, unselfconscious embraces that Quentin couldn’t help but lean up into. For all that he was fastidious about his dress, Eliot never seemed to mind hugging you if you were dirty, or—“You smell rank,” Eliot said, still holding him tight. “And what are you _wearing_?”

“Rustic peasant garb,” Quentin said, his face squashed against Eliot’s shoulder, and half-laughed when Eliot shuddered delicately. “What, like you’ve never worn anything made out of a grain sack?”

“You _know_ we don’t discuss that.” Eliot let him go and took a step back to inspect him, head to toe, his gaze almost as warm as his grip had been. Quentin shrugged awkwardly under the look, and finally dropped his rucksack to the floor. “Two legs, two arms, a _very_ pretty and remarkably unharmed face—glad to see you’re all in one piece, Q.”

“More or less,” Quentin said. Then, a little snippily, because he couldn’t help himself: “I guess you weren’t sure when I’d be back.”

“Oh, no,” Eliot said, “we were expecting you today. Did you know there’s a fortune-telling fish in one of the fountains in the eastern courtyard? Tick went and had a talk with it.”

“Oh,” Quentin said—half surprise, half accusation.

“I didn’t really believe it’d be _right_ ,” Eliot continued blithely, “but he was _very_ stressed about getting a date on the books.” 

“A date for what?” 

“For the wedding,” Eliot said. He was still inspecting Quentin. “That _belt_ ,” he said, and, “Seriously, when was the last time you took a bath?”

Quentin glanced around the room. A _wedding_. There were, now that he was looking for them, signs of this imminent event everywhere: deep drapes of cream gauze around the enormous windows overlooking the sea, long tables along the back of the room on which piles of flowers were being assembled into wreaths and bouquets. There was a big roll of red carpet in a corner of the room. Margo, he realized, was micromanaging the catering.

“Whose wedding?” he asked, and only stopped assessing the room when Eliot failed to answer. “Eliot? Who’s getting married?”

Eliot shrugged, a strangely uncertain gesture that, coming from Eliot, put Quentin immediately on edge. “Well,” he said. Then, seeming to give up on a diplomatic explanation, he smiled ruefully, and touched Quentin’s arm, and said: “We are.”

 

When they’d first moved to Fillory, Whitespire hadn’t had any showers. “This world,” Eliot had said, examining a huge, dirtied bathtub with a look of frank disgust on his face, “is a needlessly medieval hellscape.”

Quentin didn’t actually mind most of Fillory’s technological inadequacies—unlike Eliot, he could live without champagne and filtered cigarettes, or at least, if he wanted them, he didn’t mind zapping back to Earth for an afternoon. Still—on the subject of running water, he’d been inclined to agree that something ought to be done, although he’d been happy to let Eliot actually do it.

People were surprised, sometimes, to realize that Eliot was smart. Not just smart: _extremely_ smart. And—not just extremely smart, either: determined, and tenacious, and inventive. He had MacGyveresque qualities that seemed to lay dormant for long, lazy periods, until something piqued his interest and suddenly he was knee-deep in a problem, finding some clever way to solve it.

In the end, he’d bespelled a waterfall to pass through the bathtubs on command. It was a fiddly, tricky bit of magic: you were meant to control the temperature by thinking things like _hotter_ and _colder_ , but in practice, the water was likely to turn frigid if you let your attention slip, or too-hot if, like Quentin at the moment, you were boiling up inside.

 _We are_. Quentin flinched under the painful torrent but didn’t step out of it, and scrubbed furiously at the back of his neck. We _are._ Like _hell_. It wasn’t the kind of thing you sprang on a person who’d just returned from _actually_ a pretty successful and significant quest, not that anybody had asked him about it, or asked him anything at all. “We are,” Eliot had said, and didn’t even add—what? “If that’s all right with you?”

Quentin was pretty sure he’d tried to launch into an explanation—“It’s perfectly logical—” but he hadn’t stuck round to hear it. He’d wheeled right round and stomped up to his quarters, which were _also_ full of wedding decorations, and which Margo and Eliot had apparently additionally taken to using as a walk-in closet. There were clothes _everywhere_.

The water really was uncomfortable. Quentin gritted his teeth.

“Well, _this_ is melodramatic,” Eliot said from the doorway.

Quentin couldn’t see him clearly; the room was impossibly steamy. “Go away,” he said shortly, but Eliot stepped through the doorframe instead.

“I promise I’m not looking,” Eliot said, moving closer to the bath. “Not that I could if I wanted. What’s going _on_ in here?”

“I’m _serious_ ,” Quentin snapped. “Can I have five _minutes_ to myself—”

“You just had a whole month,” Eliot said unsympathetically. “And you’re boiling yourself alive.” He’d come close enough to the tub that Quentin could make out the long-suffering expression on his face as he raised his hands and murmured something that cooled the water instantly.

“I was enjoying that,” Quentin said grimly.

“You’re bright red,” Eliot said. “You look sunburnt. Come on, just let me explain.”

“If you don’t let me finish my shower in peace,” Quentin said, “I’m going to….”

“Yes?”

Quentin stuck his head under the water.

“...I’ll wait,” Eliot sighed, and left the room again.

He did. When Quentin finally dragged himself out of the bathroom, Eliot was reclining on the bed, head pillowed on his arms, the very picture of royal idleness. Quentin had wrapped himself in two huge Turkish towels. “Fashion forward,” Eliot said when he blinked his eyes open, and then, “Well? Can I proceed, or would you like to sulk some more first?”

Quentin grunted. There were piles and piles and _piles_ of clothing in the room, but nothing belonging to him; it was all heavy brocade, and billowy-sleeved blouses that might’ve been Eliot’s _or_ Margo’s—it was impossible to say.

“We had,” Eliot said, unperturbed by Quentin’s non-response, “a little bit of an. Hm. Misunderstanding. With the Fillorians.”

Quentin grunted again.

“I’d forgotten what a charming companion you are,” Eliot said. He levered himself up onto his elbows. “Q—did you realize Tick thought we were all….”

Quentin did make a face at that.

“...siblings,” Eliot finished, managing somehow to sound reproving, as if _he_ weren’t the most gutter-minded of them all. “The Chatwins were the last _remotely_ effective leaders these people had—since then, it’s been nothing but murder, rack, and ruin from every wannabe regent who’s wandered through the front doors of this place.”

“Right,” Quentin said slowly, “because of their _cursed thrones_ ,” but Eliot was grimacing and shaking his head.

“I know that,” he said, “and _you_ know that, but centuries of Fillorian lore apparently suggest that… They want us to be related, Q. They think if we’re related we won’t, you know.”

“Kill each other,” Quentin said.

“Right.”

“Watch me,” Quentin said grimly, and tugged one of his towels tighter in the front, frowning. “Eliot, we’re _not_ related.”

“No,” Eliot agreed.

“And getting married won’t make us—brothers.”

“No,” Eliot said again, and pushed himself all the way up off the bed, striding across the room to pluck a gauzy white tunic covered in printed gold horseshoes out of Quentin’s numb hands. “We burned some of your clothes,” he said unrepentantly, tossing the tunic to one side. “But we had some new ones made, too.” He bypassed the pile Quentin had been investigating completely and made a beeline for a sumptuous velvet armchair almost buried under vibrantly-patterned pants, rummaging through it as he spoke. “It’s a compromise—the wedding, I mean. I think—we have some leverage. Things we know—know how to do—that they don’t. But I think—ah!” He pulled out a nondescript pair of pants and a shirt and turned to fling them at Quentin. When Quentin met his eyes, he looked uncharacteristically serious. “Tick says the marriage will be enough to stop them from running us back to Earth with torches and pitchforks.”

“What if—I could marry Alice,” Quentin said.

Eliot’s face did something quick and strange before he smirked and said, “ _Very_ opportunistic, you little Don Juan.”

“That’s not—”

“They don’t care about the girls,” Eliot said, brushing him off. “They don’t think girls are, uh…”

“...as likely to kill each other?” Quentin said disbelievingly. “They have _met_ Margo.”

“Margo says that nothing comes more naturally to sexists than ignoring reality,” Eliot said. “Please don’t make me talk about it anymore; I’ve spent the past month discussing little else.”

Even through the continuing haze of disbelief, Quentin managed to feel sympathetic about _that._ He must have made a face that said as much, because Eliot made a face back, and said pacifyingly, clearly pressing his advantage, “The whole thing is strictly for show. Marriage in name only. I promise.”

“Did you know,” Quentin said—he was feeling slightly dizzy with tiredness now that he was clean—“that in the Middle Ages, royal marriages weren’t considered valid unless their consummation had been witnessed?”

“I did know that,” Eliot said. “I saw it on an episode of _Reign_. But I cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promise not to bone you. You’re cute, Q, but you’re not, like—”

“That’s not what I—”

“—irresistibly cute,” Eliot finished. “No consummation required. Scout’s honor.”

“You were never,” Quentin said. He dropped the clothes Eliot had found him onto the bed. “Do you really wanna stay King this bad?”

“Bad enough to perform a meaningless civic ritual that’ll affect my life not at all? Yes,” Eliot said slowly, "I certainly _do_."

It was a little rich, Quentin thought, for Eliot to be acting like _he_ was the idiot right now.

“Alright,” Quentin said. Something was pounding in his temple. It was too _bright_ in here.

“Alright, like—”

“Fine,” Quentin snapped, “we’ll get married. Now _leave_. I haven’t slept in about a week.”

 

Once Quentin had passed out for almost twenty-four hours straight, woken to eat voraciously, slept again, and finally rejoined the land of the living, he reconsidered whether or not he was really going to take the situation lying down. He was never going on a quest again if this was the kind of thing that went sideways in his absence. It seemed impossible that there wasn’t _some_ way out of this. Eliot and Margo probably hadn’t found it, he thought meanly, because they were actually _excited_ about planning the damn wedding. Well, _Quentin_ was gonna find it. He was gonna find it and they weren’t gonna have to get married at all. They could dance and eat canapes to celebrate staying legally single instead.

Only—

There wasn’t a better solution.

He spent a full week perusing the castle archives, arguing vehemently with Tick, and enduring long, infuriating conversations with the sloth, who was, it turned out, the official court historian. Tick was immovable: “It’s tradition,” he kept saying, and, primly, “You’ll thank me,” which made Quentin want _actually_ to punch him. Tradition _that_. The sloth was immovable too, albeit, Quentin thought, more sympathetic; or maybe it just seemed that way because she was slow, and because her translator tended towards the poetic.

By Friday, grasping at straws, he’d even slunk out to the eastern courtyard and attempted to consult the oracular carp—well—he _thought_ it was the oracular carp. It was the only fish that turned up. “Do Eliot and I _have_ get married to stay in power?” he asked it very slowly.

“Gloop,” it said, puckering its mouth open and closed and bobbing at the water’s surface.

Lacking a translator, Quentin was forced to let it lie.

The worst part was, it became clear at each stage of his inquiries that Eliot had preceded him. All the books he needed from the library had already been pulled. Tick kept repeating, each time Quentin tried to consult him, “As I told High King Eliot,” looking longingly at the door, as if it weren’t his _job_ to field these inquiries. As for the sloth—Quentin was squeamishly convinced that she had some kind of crush on Eliot. She and her handler kept getting into tense, whispered arguments about it while Quentin slumped in his throne, head in hand, and pretended to be absolutely anywhere else.

“Found anything?” Eliot asked one evening, having found Quentin bent to work at a long oak table in the library.

“No,” Quentin said. He shifted in his seat. He’d been reading all afternoon, a series of deadly dull historical tomes and legal briefs, and his ass was sore, and also, it turned out, the sun had mostly gone down, which was maybe why it had gotten so difficult to see.

“Turn a light on,” Eliot said, “you’ll ruin your eyes.” Without waiting for a response, he made a quick, deft gesture with both hands, sketched a sigil in the air, and pushed it at Quentin’s book, so that the pages lit up from below. It was clever. “Don’t forget to move the spell when you’re done,” Eliot said.

“Yeah.” Quentin blinked. He could see the page, now, but he couldn’t see Eliot. _You’re not the only one who can do magic,_ he thought, and summoned an ornate candelabra from across the room, lit its candles with a snap of his fingers. “What are you even doing here?”

“Wedding research,” Eliot said promptly. He sat down across from Quentin. “Well? What’s your guess?”

Quentin pushed his book across the table. “My guess is that we’re getting married,” he said, “which I _guess_ you knew.” An image sprang suddenly to mind: Eliot sitting in this same library, reading these same books, looking for some loophole that would relieve him of the terrible burden of having to marry Quentin. _It’s not like that_ , Quentin thought, trying to shove the thought back down into the pit from which these kind of illogical, self-pitying ideas habitually sprang fully-formed. _It’s not like you want to marry Eliot either._ Well, sure, but somehow that didn’t mean he liked the thought of Eliot trying desperately to shake Quentin free.

He shook his head and glanced across the table. Eliot had the kind of striking face that loved to be bathed in flickering candlelight. He looked preeningly dramatic. “You had to look into it for yourself,” he said. “I get it.” And then: “You should eat something.”

“Sure,” Quentin said. He pulled his book back towards him. He felt itchy all of a sudden, even squirmier than before. “And you should go look up your—fabric samples, or whatever.”

“You’re very lucky to have me,” Eliot said. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it up on two legs. “I hesitate to imagine what kind of wedding you’d plan for yourself.”

“I’d just go to the courthouse,” Quentin said. He stared down at the book. All the words made sense again, against the softly glowing pages. “It’s not—that’s what I always thought I’d do.”

“Oh?” Eliot said.

“Well. It’s the part that matters,” Quentin said, and didn’t look up again, even when Eliot finally stood up and sloped off into the murk of the room.

 

After that, Quentin gave up on looking for loopholes. He _didn’t_ feel like giving himself eyestrain over it. What was that saying—about accepting the things you couldn’t change? It hadn’t traditionally been Quentin’s strong suit, sure, but—he was growing. He was different now than he had been. He could take things in stride, or, at least, wobblingly in stride, or at the _very_ least, he could understand when he’d been hauled onto a ride that wasn’t gonna stop, and could choose, self-preservationally, to keep his arms and legs inside the cart.

There was a week still until the wedding. The castle was in a state of constant chaos. Quentin caught sight of Margo only at irregular intervals, and even then, usually because she’d barreled up to him out of nowhere, grabbed his arm, dug her nails in, and asked him some kind of terrifyingly militant question about place settings, or entrance music, or lighting, not that she ever listened to his answers. “Why am I asking you? Where’s Tick? Go to your room and do a clay mask; if you have a zit on Eliot’s wedding day, I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind.” Once, she shoved him up against a wall, ordered him to open his eyes wide, and stared into them for a long minute before nodding and saying, “You can go now—”

“Oh,” Eliot said from the far side of the room, somehow managing to look even loucher the second their eyes were on him, “don’t stop _yet_. I was enjoying that.”

“Ew,” Margo said

“Um,” Quentin said.

Margo patted Quentin’s chest and let him go. “He’s going to look very nice in burgundy,” she said. “With gold accents. And maybe some kind of soft… hmmm.” She squinted consideringly.

“Can’t I wear jeans?” Quentin said, but mostly, he realized after the fact, to make Eliot laugh, which he did, crossing to tuck an arm around Margo’s waist and leading her away with a wink in Quentin’s direction before she could gut him.

Eliot, as far as Quentin could tell, was having a blast. He loved planning, and attention, and being in charge of anything. Unlike Margo, he wasn’t a wraith; he kept dropping by Quentin’s quarters with his big leather-bound wedding planner, depositing himself languorously on Quentin’s bed, and explaining, with relish, the various failures and triumphs of his day.

“Why are you in my room telling me about this?” Quentin asked the first time he stopped by. “Why aren’t you in Margo’s room telling Margo?”

Eliot flipped a page and cast Quentin a scornful sidelong look. “Margo was there,” he said. “I’m gossiping to you _about_ Margo.”

“Oh,” Quentin said. Margo would _hate_ that, he thought cheerfully, and didn’t question the visits again.

And anyway, after that first evening, Eliot started bringing snacks—“catering samples,” he corrected Quentin. _Bribes_ , Quentin translated cynically, but he didn’t mind. “Eating these is part of the job,” Eliot added, taking a neat bite of an intricately decorated pastry and holding it out towards Quentin. Quentin considered taking it from him; instead, comfortably tucked under his blanket, he leaned up and let Eliot feed him a bite.

“‘s good,” he said with his mouth full. Eliot, when Quentin blinked up at him, was frozen and frowning. He seemed to shake it off under Quentin’s gaze.

“Talking with your mouth full is repulsive,” he said. “And you’re getting crumbs everywhere. We’re going to have to get you a rubber sheet.”

“A what?” Quentin said.

Eliot sighed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

It was nice, it turned out, not to be alone in the evenings. It was fun to goadingly call Eliot a groomzilla and listen to him, in response, explain some element of the ceremony so animatedly that Quentin could almost see it the way Eliot did, even if he _did_ still think they could have done the thing in private, with Margo and Tick for witnesses, and called it a day.

Eliot didn’t agree.

“It’s important to take it seriously,” Eliot said, in the tone of someone who’d put a lot of thought into formulating this eminently logical explanation, “because _everybody_ loves a royal wedding. Even if they think they won’t. And we could really—” ticking something off in his book with a tried look—“use a _smidgen_ of good publicity.”

“You just like it, you liar,” Quentin said, rolling over onto his stomach with a groan. “You just like doing it.”

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work,” Eliot said. He made another mark. “Aristotle.”

“Asshole,” Quentin said, but lazily. He turned his face on the pillow so that he could watch Eliot work. “I wanna go to bed.”

Eliot glanced over. “Well, you turn _your_ lamp off, darling,” he said, putting on an affectedly doting voice, “and I’ll leave mine on.” When Quentin just grunted, he rolled his eyes, cast a glance around the room to find the candles, and extinguished them with a snap. His book was glowing like the one he’d done for Quentin. It really _was_ a useful spell.

“It’s a good thing we’ll be keeping separate quarters,” Eliot said quietly. “You’re clearly incredibly high maintenance.”

“Pot,” Quentin said. “Kettle.” He wondered what it would actually be like to share a room with Eliot—he was certainly keeping enough of his clothes here already. Probably fine. Maybe fun. Eliot probably had very luxurious shower gel; he always smelled nice. And Quentin didn’t mind sharing a bed—well, he’d never really done it before—but he didn’t mind it right now, Eliot lying alongside him, scribbling in his stupid planner, while Quentin’s whole body relaxed into the mattress, powering down. Eliot ran warm, and the castle was drafty. It was a convenient combination. As he fell asleep, a breeze tickling his foot, he imagined Eliot as a blanket, folding across Quentin’s whole body, keeping him safe and warm through the whole long night.

 

There was a certain amount of royal business as usual, even through the last week approaching the wedding. Eliot and Quentin got stuck hearing petitions in the throne room for two full afternoons; both times, Margo wriggled out to go on what sounded to Quentin like extremely relaxing day trips.

With the wedding imminent, most of the petitioners came bearing gifts. It was polite to accept these, although in Quentin’s opinion, he was much better at doing so than Eliot, who kept half-turning with handfuls of shimmering emerald eggs and dingy jars of nondescript powders, presumably although not evidently desirable, and, once, a wooden cake topper that he handed over with an expression of such disgruntlement, Quentin couldn’t help but laugh aloud.

The cake topper had been whittled in their approximate likenesses. Quentin looked fine enough, but Eliot’s head was disproportionate, and his curls were geometric. “I look like I got a _perm_ ,” he hissed. He deposited it on the table next to his throne and settled broodingly back, shooting it a last bitter glance as they waited for the next petitioner to be ushered in.

“Have you nailed down your wedding day hairstyle?” Quentin asked. “Something to think about.”

The look Eliot shot him was violently unforgiving.

Mostly, receiving the petitioners was dull. Everybody wanted stuff they simply couldn’t have, or—stuff they could _maybe_ have if somebody else got something that _they_ wanted which would only happen if somebody _else_ got something—and so on forever. Quentin understood that you _could_ try and solve everybody’s problems, if you set the thing up like a word problem. But it was a _complicated_ word problem, and Quentin, if he was honest, hated work that you couldn’t check in the back of the book. You never knew for sure if you'd gotten it right.

Eliot loved it. He had developed, in Quentin’s absence, an intricate method of recording people’s problems and desires and the scope and parameters of each, and then pinpointing their intersections. Quentin didn’t really understand it; Eliot said that made sense, since, at the end of the day, there was a certain amount of freestyling involved in the process.

“How do you know,” Quentin said, peering over at his book, “when you’ve found the best way to—uh—”

“Make everybody stop _complaining_?” Eliot said.

“Make _anybody_ stop complaining,” Quentin said dolefully, slumping in his throne and trying to will the doors to the room to stay shut with the power of his mind.

Eliot shrugged. “You just know.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Quentin asked.

“Then you’re wrong,” Eliot said, rolling his eyes, “but you _thought_ you knew.”

Quentin had a headache. “I hate being King,” he said. He let himself slide right off the throne and onto the dais below, where he rolled over onto his stomach and groaned, the ermine collar of his robe tickling at the back of his neck.

“Don’t worry,” Eliot said as Quentin rested his cheek against the cool floor. He sounded amused. “As soon as we’re married, you can hie yourself off on another quest with perfect impunity. I promise to wave you a fond farewell from the ramparts like a dutiful husband and roll out the red carpet whenever you return.”

“Hnph,” Quentin grunted, and sighed. “Okay. What are you you gonna do while I’m gone.”

“Anything I want,” Eliot said breezily.

Quentin blinked and rolled over onto his back. “What does _that_ mean,” he said, tipping his chin to peer back at Eliot. Even from upside down, Eliot looked absolutely, relaxedly regal. He’d drawn one knee up to his chest and was resting an arm there, his long, graceful fingers dangling against his leg.

“It means that I’ll entertain myself,” Eliot said. He was smirking. “And you can entertain yourself, too. In the woods. With a—satyr, maybe. Well. Nymph.”

“Entertain like—ew,” Quentin said.

“Very small-minded.”

“Eliot—”

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot said in a sing-songy tone.

“I don’t want to fuck a satyr,” Quentin snapped, “ _or_ a nymph,” and stopped tipping his head back to look at Eliot. He was feeling inexplicably tetchy, and tetchier still when Eliot said, “That makes one of us,” in a tone that only further convinced Quentin that _something_ had been going on between Eliot and their priest during their blocking session the other day. Quentin wasn’t an _expert_ on Fillorian religious practices, but it seemed skeevy, regardless of denomination, to make eyes at someone whose wedding you were intended to officiate. Was it too late to replace him?

“Don’t sulk,” Eliot said. “It wouldn’t kill you to get laid.”

“Glurgh,” Quentin said.

“It might improve your outlook.”

“I’d like to see it try,” Quentin said, and threw an arm across his eyes.

“Well, it wouldn’t kill _me_ to get laid, anyway,” Eliot said dryly. “Having heroically promised to keep my hands off you.”

Quentin had a sudden, dim flashback to that time—with Margo—the truth was, he’d been so hopped up that nothing about that night had _ever_ come very clear. He had a single distinct memory, before the psychedelic haze of the sex itself, of Eliot’s hand cupping his face and sliding round to the back of his neck. Then nothing until the next morning, when Eliot had smirked and said, “I did _not_ think you had it in you,” and Quentin, head hammering, sick with guilt, had said, “I don’t,” and buried his face in the pillow, eyes clenched shut.

Who _was_ Eliot gonna find to fuck around here? And no one in the castle had an ounce of discretion. Whoever he found—

“Everyone’s gonna think I’m a cuckold,” Quentin said. He could hear the involuntary whine in his own voice.

“But you’ll be cuckolding me, too,” Eliot said, as if that were comforting. “In the woods. With—”

“Don’t—”

“We’ll be cuckolding each other,” Eliot said bracingly.

“El,” Quentin said, but just then there was a commotion outside the doors, and the creak of someone beginning to throw them open, and Quentin had to scramble up and back into his chair, trying to look dignified. They spent a full hour hearing land disputes, and by the time they were alone again, he couldn’t remember what he’d been planning to say at all.

 

On the morning of the wedding, Quentin woke up in an unbearably bad mood. He lay in bed for twenty minutes, wiggling his toes under the blankets and staring blearily up at the ceiling, and only got up when someone knocked on the door and said, “Sire?” at which point it seemed improbable that the fantasy he’d been entertaining— _that you have but slumbr’d here, while these visions did appear—_ was anything but that.

Quentin had expected one servant, maybe two, when he went to open the door: a small live alarm contingent, just there to make sure he was awake before leaving him to get dressed and twiddle his thumbs in mounting dread. But there were seven of them instead, and they pushed right into the room despite Quentin’s sleepy protests. No matter how much Quentin said, “No, I can—” and, “I don’t need—” it was clear that help was going nowhere.

“Sorry,” one of the servants said. “King’s orders.”

“ _I’m_ the king,” Quentin said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“High King,” the young man corrected unrepentantly, and the next thing Quentin knew he’d been efficiently stripped and ushered into the bathroom, and someone had deposited him in a huge hot bath, in which anywhere between six and eight arms seemed to be scrubbing him vigorously at any given moment. After the initial horror passed, it was almost soothing. He felt like a pinball, being whacked skilfully from person to person: one tipping his chin up to scour his neck, another pressing him forward to sponge off his back, someone’s hands threading through his wet hair to work at his scalp in a way that made his whole body go limp and compliant, like a dog rolling over to show its belly.

After the bath, someone toweled him off and laid him out on the bed, and then somebody else gave him a massage that— _had_ to be magical, somehow, he didn’t know—it felt like each of his muscles was being removed and wrung out and replaced in better working order. He got oiled from head to toe with something that smelled like nothing he’d ever encountered on earth—like magic, somehow, pure and distilled. He tried asking what it was but nobody was paying much attention to anything he said—too busy doing something that felt _extremely_ good to his calves. Hm. He’d have to figure it out later, what it was derived from. The oil. It was probably expensive. It _smelled_ expensive. No wonder Eliot wanted to keep being King, when it meant he could beckon someone into the throne room and command, officiously, “A barrel of fine oil for my—”

Which was when Quentin realized with a jolt that the seven servants currently digging their thumbs into his pressure points were getting him ready for Eliot to _fuck_.

It was possible that Quentin blacked out a little at that point. It felt like some final, ineffable muscle had been wrenched out of his body and run over with an SUV and shoved back in and that was it—he was still lying on the bed. He was still covered in priceless oils. He was still limp, body pleasantly thrumming, and it was for _Eliot_ , it was because everyone in the damn castle thought he and Eliot—thought Eliot was going to—Quentin shuddered and said, voice higher than he meant it to be, “Is that…? Are you done or?”

“Almost,” someone said.

“Okay,” he said, and lay very still as a great wave of feeling rolled up his body, from his toes to the top of his head. Someone was massaging his bicep in a workmanlike way. _Okay_ , he thought again, staggered.

It was easy for them to get him into his outfit after that—burgundy, just as Margo had promised. He’d never felt more pliant in his life. It was all striking him, suddenly, as incredibly, hysterically funny. He’d been cleaned and pressed and he was being wrapped in exactly the kind of fiddly, luxurious outfit Eliot loved and Quentin felt awkward in, only the awkwardness this time was— _I’m a_ present. _I’m a_ present _for_ Eliot. That was—crazy. It was ludicrous. It was...

His mouth was dry.

“Your highness,” someone said, and suddenly all the servants were bowing before him. They’d finished. “Best wishes.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said vaguely, “you too,” and let them usher him out of the room and into the palace at large.

 

The castle was in an uproar. The servants led Quentin down those halls which had been reserved for royal use, but he could hear the sounds of organized chaos everywhere anyway—trumpeting and heralding and a lot of unidentifiable shriekings and squawkings and—oh—Margo was yelling at someone. Quentin felt oddly touched.

The antechamber in which Quentin was deposited to wait, on the other hand, was quiet once the door closed, thick-walled and windowless. Quentin looked around helplessly and then, for lack of anything better to do, sat down in the room’s single straight-backed chair. It was hugely uncomfortable. Probably religious, he thought glumly, squirming. He stared across at the opposite wall, on which were hanging three tapestries, each depicting—

It was _The Hunt for the Unicorn_ , Quentin realized, and started to laugh, which of course was when Eliot walked in.

“Glad to find you in good spirits,” he said as Quentin turned towards the open door.

It was somehow exactly the wrong thing to say. Quentin could feel the laughter go out of him in a rush, and the bad mood of the early morning pour immediately back in to take its place. Eliot looked poised and well-rested and— _above it all_ , Quentin thought. Like it was some stupid big joke to be getting married—to be getting married to Quentin—ha _ha,_ he thought furiously.

The tide-turn must have shown on his face because Eliot winced. “Or not,” he said, eyebrows raising in a way that made Quentin want to stomp right back up to his bedroom and slam the door behind him.

Quentin didn’t say anything. After an expectant moment, Eliot made a face and turned away. There was a low table with a selection of scrolls spread across it against one wall of the room; Eliot bent to inspect them while Quentin sunk down in his seat and kept staring at the tapestries.

“Are you nervous?” Eliot said after a minute, without turning.

“No.”

He wasn’t. That was real. Nervous would mean he was worried about things going wrong, which he wasn’t. Things had _gone wrong_ when he agreed to this in the first place; everything after was icing on the cake.

“Because it would be silly,” Eliot said ( _shut_ up! Quentin wanted to shout), “to be nervous when it’s just for show, and afterwards—”

“I _know_ ,” Quentin said sharply, and leaned forward on his knees.

 _Angry_. He felt _angry_.

Eliot turned around, finally. He had _not_ permed his hair; it was falling in lovely, soft ringlets across the band of his crown, and his eyes looked brighter than usual, as if….Quentin was almost certain he’d lined them a little. Or someone had lined them for him. Eliot had probably gotten the same royal treatment as Quentin that morning, been scrubbed and kneaded and anointed, and unlike Quentin, he’d probably taken it perfectly in stride. It was exactly the kind of thing he _would_ accept as his due. Quentin could picture him perfectly, laid out on his stomach, the long line of his back glistening as some pair of anonymous hands massaged that exotically scented oil into his shoulder blades and down his spine and worked it purposefully into his—his ass, and—

It was easy to imagine, too, Quentin realized, the way Eliot would look peering languorously back over his shoulder, liking what—who—he saw; letting his eyes flick up and down in that polite, intoxicating way he had of saying _interested? Shall we?_ And if whoever was touching him had nodded _yes_ , he would have rolled onto his back, careless of the sheets, and settled back, cock already hard and red and jutting away from his body; and he might have crossed his arms behind his head, the exact way he’d reclined so often in _Quentin’s_ bed with _Quentin_ there, and looked up through his lashes like, _well_? Until someone took his cock in hand and started to—

“What’s wrong?” Eliot said as Quentin was contending with _that_ startling vision. He smirked and added, in a slow, condescendingly jokey tone, “Do you not think I’ll be a good fake husband? Because I promise—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Quentin finally actually said, and couldn’t follow it up with anything else because his breath was caught in his throat. He wished he could _explain_ it: why it was so horrible to watch Eliot lean placidly against a wall and smirk in the face of marrying someone he didn’t choose.

The way Eliot looked right now—it was the same way he looked when he said things like, “Some people need their families,” ashing a cigarette in a careless, supercilious way that screamed, _not me, of course, thank God_. Eliot was like that with _everything_ : acting as if it were better to make a joke about the impossibility of having something nice than it was to say, simply and plainly, I wish I _could_ have it. I deserve it.

“Q,” Eliot said. He didn’t sound so jokey anymore. “You’re kinda freaking me out.”

“It’s nice to know that _something_ can,” Quentin said.

It was hard to read Eliot’s face. “Okay,” he said slowly after a minute, just as Quentin said, “It might be a fake marriage, but it’s still—it _is_ still a marriage. It still matters. You only get to do it once—to one person—it should _matter_. It should matter to you.”

“ _Nothing_ really matters to me,” Eliot said. He was _smiling_ again, a strange smile, but _still—_

Quentin was gonna throw him off a _cliff_ —

“ _Everything_ doesn’t get to be a joke, Eliot!” Quentin snapped. “I’m saying that you deserve to marry someone you love.”

Which _should_ have ended the conversation. Quentin was pretty sure it should have. Except: “...of course I love you,” Eliot said after a long pause. He looked puzzled.

Quentin could feel his heart going too fast. Eliot opened his mouth like he might say something else—hesitated—parted his lips again and—

“Go time, gentlemen,” Margo said, sweeping into the room. Her dress was so bright that it seemed to murmur hazily at the edges; she looked impossibly radiant. Like _she_ should have been the one getting married.

“Alright,” Eliot said, instead of—what had he been going to _say_? He sounded calm again, and bowed deeply in Margo’s direction, smirking when she rolled her eyes but curtsied obligingly back. “Shall we?” he said, offering her an elbow and turning to look back at Quentin, something inscrutable passing across his face, disappearing as he turned away again.

“You’d better shall,” she said, “or we’re gonna get thrown the fuck out of this backwards-ass world.” She slipped her arm through Eliot’s; Quentin watched as they proceeded out of the room. They really did look perfectly matched.

It wasn’t too late, he thought glumly, something churning in his gut, to rappel out a window; to run away forever and never think about any of this again.

But—he couldn’t. He didn’t. He took a deep breath, and straightened his crown, and followed them unto the breach.

 

It was a strange ceremony.

Quentin, of course, hadn’t been involved in any of the preparations. He’d been informed (at some length; Eliot really was unstoppable in planning mode) that there’d been a lively exchange of cultural ideas contributing to the end result, bits and pieces of ritual curbed from here, cribbed from there. It was the exact kind of thing Eliot cared about, and was good at: taking a selection of somehow insufficient things and making them right. Making them matter.

It was wasted on Quentin, anyway. He didn’t process a word. He repeated what he was told to, when he was told to, and knelt on command. At some point, Eliot put his hands out and Quentin proffered his own, much clammier hands in response, and then they were kneeling, gripping each other, as the priest said something overhead.

 _Of course I love you_. That’s what Eliot had said. Quentin kept examining his face for some sign of what it meant, but—Eliot just looked infuriatingly Kingly. If there were any cameras in Fillory, Quentin would have been dreading the proofs. _Of_ course _I love you_. _Of course I_ love _you. Of course I love_ you _._ Well—that wasn’t news, _exactly_ , Quentin told himself, desperately willing his palms to stop sweating. He _knew_ that Eliot loved him; he loved Eliot, too. Quentin had spent his whole life dreaming of Fillory and still, at this point, if Eliot wanted to leave—if Eliot didn’t want to be here anymore—

Why stay? Why stay anywhere without Eliot; without his sly, sidelong looks, his wry, self-satisfied bon mots, his—that thing where he—

The royal hairdresser had braided Quentin’s hair on both sides, and braided the braids together behind his head. There was nothing free to shake into his eyes, even though he badly wanted to hide.

That thing, he thought in a reckless, determined rush, where Eliot put an arm across his shoulders, and drew him close, and Quentin felt—small, and cared for.

 _Why stay anywhere without Eliot?_ Wasn’t that why he was _here_ , right now, at his own wedding? He didn’t _have_ to agree to this. He could just as easily have said, sayonara, suckers, you’re on your own. Being a King of Fillory was—it pained Quentin to say it every time; it felt like betraying every iteration of himself up till this one, but it was _true_ —far more trouble than it was worth. Everybody was mad at you all the time. You were expected to solve problems the Gods never meant anyone to solve.

But Eliot liked it. Eliot liked being High King. Eliot liked the challenge, and the responsibility, and Quentin liked Eliot, so—

The priest gestured for them to stand. Quentin couldn’t quite force himself to unclench his hands, and Eliot didn’t make him. They stood, somewhat awkwardly, together.

God, Eliot was so _handsome_. _Why are you such a fucking idiot_ , he asked himself—blame it on the headrush of getting up too quickly—but he _was_. Handsome and too-clever and— _mean_ , just mean enough, mean in a way that made Quentin feel loose and at ease around him, in a way he normally never did. And he had such nice _eyes_.

Eliot had begun to frown slightly. Quentin gripped his hands tighter. He felt kind of drunk. Maybe Margo had done a spell on him. Maybe Margo had thought, if _anybody_ could fuck up a high-stakes sham wedding, it would be Quentin, and it _would_ be Quentin, and he was fucking it up _anyway,_ because he couldn’t stop thinking—

“—as your lawfully wedded husband?” the priest was saying. Quentin glanced over at him. He looked placid as he recited the lines; one of his hooves was twitching against the ground. “Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, to be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Eliot said.

Eliot could have taken that part out. He _should_ have taken that part out. He could have had the priest say: forsaking _nothing_ , owing each other nothing, not faith or comfort or honor or aide. But he hadn’t taken it out, or altered it at all. He’d kept the bog-standard line, with its familiar, calm cadence. _Do you promise. I do._

The priest was shaking out one of his haunches.

If Eliot fucked the priest, Quentin thought hazily, or the priest fucked Eliot—ever—ever in a million years—he would scream. Or if Eliot fucked _anybody_ —

“Ahem,” the priest said. Quentin jerked. Everyone was looking at him, including Eliot, who didn’t seem nervous or angry or hurried. His face was placid. Eliot was so _good_ at looking unmoved. Well, maybe he was.

“—I do,” Quentin said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Margo let out a deep, relieved sigh.

“Then I pronounce you married,” the priest said. “Go forth as such.”

The crowd began to applaud. Somebody must have prepared a spell in advance: behind the thrones, soft, silent fireworks began to explode, filling the air with gold dust, and the heraldic flags Eliot had designed for each of them rolled abruptly up the wall, and then back down together, double-wide and magnificently gilded, which was, Quentin thought dazedly, a bit _much_ , but he didn’t have time to overthink it—Eliot was stepping close, touching Quentin’s cheek, looking incredibly, intoxicatingly serious, and bending to kiss him—just once—barely a taste—before he pulled back, took Quentin’s hand again, and turned him bodily to face the crowd.

The recessional began to play.

Quentin had the urge, sudden and too-familiar, to shove Eliot into a bush. _I barely_ started _,_ he thought meanly, and then, startled, oh, and then, _oh_ , letting Eliot lead him down the aisle, everyone standing, clapping, throwing petals into the aisle that were so light they never landed—just floated in the air as they pressed forward—and then they were through the doors to the antechamber, which closed behind them with a bang, and it was done.

 

 

The day’s festivities had been strictly scheduled. They’d been allotted five minutes after the ceremony to change out of their formal outfits and into a second set of _semi-_ formal outfits, equally uncomfortable in Quentin’s opinion.

Eliot crossed the room right away. “Alright,” he was saying, “I know I said no last minute outfit changes, but I need your opinion on something, and you’ve got to be ready to back me up with Margo; it’s my wedding day, I shouldn’t have to fend for myself,” and only then seemed to notice that Quentin was still standing by the doors. “Q,” he said, turning to beckon at Quentin, “time’s a-wasting—”

His crown was askew. He was raising his eyebrows again. Right here, half an hour ago, Quentin had _hated_ that. And now...

“Eliot,” Quentin said in a strange, raw voice, and was surprised to realize that he was stumbling across the room, half-tripping over the hem of the cape Margo had—god _dammit_ —made him wear—stumbling towards Eliot’s alarmed face, his outstretched arms, stumbling _into_ them, and reaching up to touch Eliot’s cheek.

“What the fuck,” Eliot said.

Quentin didn’t bother to reply. He was up on his tiptoes instead, tugging Eliot down by the front of his tunic, and kissing him, an artless, tooth-clacking kiss, except that it wasn’t in Eliot’s _nature_ to kiss badly, even when surprised; he took hold of Quentin by the shoulders almost immediately and gentled him, slid a hand around the back of his neck— _ah_ , Quentin _did_ remember this from before, he _did_ —and held him in place, coaxing his mouth open and licking in until Quentin was panting and boneless, and had to pull back to gasp for air.

“What,” Eliot said again, breathless. His mouth was wet and red. He looked bewildered, but his eyes were dark and hungry, and they kept flicking down to Quentin’s lips and back up again.

“I don’t know,” Quentin said, then kissed him again and groaned, said, “You’re so _good_ at this,” right up against his lips.

Eliot was a very vain creature. Quentin could feel the words hitting him; his hand tensed on Quentin’s neck and he bit Quentin’s lower lip, nuzzled up against his jaw. “ _So_ good,” Quentin said again, and suddenly Eliot wasn’t in control _either_ : kissing Quentin so furiously that they were overbalancing and staggering to the floor, half-kneeling, Quentin getting his hands under Eliot’s tunic and shoving it up and over his head, saying frantically, “Give it to me, El, please, can you please—”

“I _told_ you,” Eliot panted, “we don’t have to—”

“I _want_ to—”

“Oh, thank God,” Eliot said feelingly, and shoved Quentin onto his back so roughly that he thunked his head against the floor and said, “Ow—!” which didn’t slow Eliot, who was already fumbling at the fastening of Quentin’s pants and wrestling them down to his knees, sliding down with them and sinking his mouth right onto Quentin’s cock.

Quentin shouted and tried to surge up—couldn’t—Eliot had already braced an arm across his hips, pinning him to the ground. He didn’t give Quentin even a moment to adjust, either; it was zero to sixty, tight, wet heat, Eliot taking him all the way to the root just to prove he could and pulling off to kiss Quentin’s cock where it was leaking at the head, then bending right back to his task.

It was like nothing, nothing else Quentin had ever felt. Quentin threaded a hand into Eliot’s hair, tried not to yank at him or shove him down. It was too good; Eliot was _too_ good. He’d barely been sucking Quentin for a minute when Quentin thought, frantic, through the haze of pleasure, _I’m gonna come, I can’t,_ and tried to tug Eliot off by the hair, which—“Eliot, I’m gonna—I don’t want to yet, come _on_ —”

Eliot just groaned and kept at it. If anything, the tugging seemed to be doing it for him. When Quentin finally managed to pull him off, his eyes were glazed, and when Quentin said, “Take your pants off already,” squinching his eyes shut and breathing deeply to try and keep from coming, Eliot said, “Oh, alright,” in a frankly uncooperative tone, and kissed the head of Quentin’s dick once more against orders before sitting up.

Eliot might have been sour—had he wanted to swallow Quentin down _that_ badly? _You cannot think about that right now._ Quentin didn’t care, though. It was worth it to watch Eliot strip efficiently off until he was naked, and Quentin could take it all in—his long, muscled thighs, the dark hair on his chest, narrowing down to his cock, which was—beautiful, Quentin thought in surprise. He hadn’t known that word could _go_ there. Throbbingly hard and slick and red and—“You didn’t get jerked off during your massage this morning, did you,” Quentin said, staring hungrily down at it.

“I wish,” Eliot said, which—“ _Ow_ ,” Eliot snapped this time, and dragged Quentin away from where he’d just leaned forward to bite the meat of Eliot’s shoulder, _hard_. “I’m _sorry_ , but _I_ had no way of knowing you were gonna jump me like an animal in the middle of our wedding,” which sent a bolt right through Quentin again. He could hear himself making an unearthly keening sound, straddling Eliot’s lap and grinding down against him, their cocks snug up against each other—yeah, this was good, fuck, he could do this _forever_. Eliot’s hand was still in his hair, an unyielding grip.

“It’s not,” Quentin slurred after a moment.

“What?”

“The middle of our wedding.”

“There’s a _whole day of activities planned,_ ” Eliot said somewhat shrilly, but actually it only made Quentin’s cock jerk even harder to think about everyone out there twiddling their thumbs, waiting on them, waiting on them to finish, a thousand people witnessing the consummation after all—

“Fuck me,” he said, and then, meekly, at Eliot’s wild, disbelieving look, “ _please._ ”

“You’re gonna need so much fucking managing,” Eliot said, and flipped them easily so that Quentin was back on the ground. He didn’t sound unhappy about it. Quentin didn’t have time to consider it for long, though, because Eliot was pushing his legs apart— _putting him on display_ , Quentin thought, flushing—and reaching behind his dick and balls to rub roughly at the soft clench of Quentin’s hole. “Like that?” he said. “You want it like that?” He worried the pad of his finger there, holding Quentin right on the edge of something, before, inevitably, it slipped in, and Quentin groaned.

He was sweating a little. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. “C’mon, come on,” he said.

“You need it so _bad_ ,” Eliot said wonderingly, and took his fucking finger away.

It was fine. It was fine. Quentin kept telling himself that. Eliot was murmuring a spell, bent half over Quentin’s body as if to prove he wasn’t going anywhere—and then something was dripping out of the air and onto Quentin’s belly, a pool of oil, and Eliot was rubbing his hand through it, fisting Quentin’s cock once, quickly, and then his own, and then sliding a finger right back into Quentin’s hot, tight hole.

Eliot had long, lovely fingers. Quentin had known that for much longer than he’d known how much he’d like to have one inside him, crooking just like this, moving slowly in and out and stroking searchingly, until Eliot found—“ _Ah_ ,” Quentin said, and arched up, grabbing at Eliot’s shoulder and releasing it just as quickly. Eliot didn’t ask if it was good. He knew it was good—Quentin could see that in his face, equal parts hunger and satisfaction, as he kept working Quentin open, giving him another finger—another—

After a minute, Quentin said, “El.” His throat felt sore.

“Lemme,” Eliot said nonsensically. He was flexing his fingers, twisting them a little as he fucked in and out.

“Just fuck me.”

“I am—”

“With your _dick_ ,” Quentin said, “I _know_ you know.”

“There is such a thing,” Eliot said through gritted teeth, “as being _too_ needy.” Quentin groaned, and Eliot shut his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m trying to show you my _moves_.”

Quentin reached blindly up. He petted Eliot’s damp cheek, his neck, felt his Adam’s apple bob as he gulped again. He braced his hand against Eliot’s chest. He loved Eliot so _much._ How could he not have known that? “El,” he said coaxingly, “put it in. Put it in. _Please_ put your cock in me, I need you to—”

“Jesus Christ,” Eliot said feverishly, eyes flying open, and shoved Quentin’s knees up, and did.

It was crazy at first—wild, blunt pressure so intense that Quentin found himself swearing under his breath, shaking involuntarily and taking deep, shocky gulps of air as Eliot fucked forward, slow until he was in to the hilt. He stayed there for a moment, hips hitching, until Quentin smacked his shoulder, then said, “You asked for it,” and started moving: heavy, steady strokes, rocking his whole weight into them.

It was confusing—Quentin kept thinking, dazed, _I don’t know what the fuck I’m_ doing _,_ but he did—his body did—he locked his ankles behind Eliot’s back without a thought, trapping him, driving him on, and when Eliot said, “You like it,” bent forward across Quentin’s body, Quentin said, “Harder,” which he hadn’t known he wanted but—yeah, when Eliot hissed and started slamming into him, he _did_.

After that, it was all loop-de-loops, no time to breathe: Eliot was shuddering and driving in, saying, “So _tight_ , Q, fuck,” and Quentin got a hand around himself and let the force of Eliot’s movement do the work for him, fucking his own fist, until his orgasm sucker-punched him, so quick he barely had time to cry out before he was coming, shooting up across his oil-slick stomach and chest, clenching tight on Eliot’s cock.

“Yeah,” Eliot choked out. He leaned down to kiss Quentin, crammed up inside of him, moving like an animal—nothing Quentin would ever have imagined of Eliot, who was _always_ in control. Not now. “Good,” he was saying wildly, “good, you’re good,” and then he was coming too, so suddenly he seemed even to surprise himself. He froze and shuddered on top of Quentin, hips still working, pulsing deep inside Quentin’s body. His come, Quentin thought, was in—he’d come in—

He thought he could maybe get hard again just _thinking_ about that, but Eliot blinked and took a few deep breaths and looked down at Quentin’s face and said, in a comically plaintive tone, “The fucking _schedule_ ,” before pulling carefully out and flopping onto the floor next to him.

“Uh,” Quentin said. He shook his head a little to clear it. He felt like someone had poured a whole pitcher of water in one ear—nothing but pleasant sloshing. “Was that more than five minutes.”

Eliot started to laugh, then groaned, then said, “ _Now_? It had to be _now_?” He’d closed both eyes. His chest was still heaving.

“Yes,” Quentin said, because it seemed like the easiest response. The flagstone floor was cold beneath his back. He huddled close to Eliot. “I’m cold,” he said experimentally.

Eliot cracked an eye. “Quentin,” he said, “are you the kind of person who always makes his partner sleep in the wet spot?”

“...Probably,” Quentin said.

“It was,” Eliot said, “a rhetorical question.” But there was a quirk at the corner of his mouth, and he reached over to tuck Quentin’s hair behind his ear.

Quentin couldn’t stop himself. “What if,” he said clumsily, “you didn’t entertain yourself while I was gone?”

Eliot stilled imperceptibly, then tilted his head at an awkward angle to gaze down at Quentin. “You are such an only child,” he sighed, and rubbed his thumb across Quentin’s collarbone. “Would you like me to lock myself in a tower so nobody can play with me when you’re not around?”

 _Yes_ , Quentin thought. “No…” he said.

But Eliot didn’t seem annoyed. “It’s alright,” he said. “I’ll come with you.” He managed to make it sound like an extremely generous concession, tugging Quentin closer as he spoke, his thumb stroking the bare skin of Quentin’s arm. “Besides,” he added, a suggestive note creeping into his voice, “I bet I could do some _great_ work in a tent.”

Quentin, who, unlike Eliot, had actually _slept_ in a tent, had his doubts about _that_. But he hmmed supportively—he wasn’t opposed to letting Eliot _try_ —and hmmed again, more enthusiastically, when Eliot, magnanimous in his self-satisfaction, warmed the flagstones beneath Quentin’s bare ass with a twitch of his fingers.

“The schedule,” Quentin said drowsily. He was incredibly comfortable.

“...Fuck it,” Eliot said. “Who cares. We’re married, aren’t we? They’re stuck with us now. We can be late.”

“We’d _better_ be married,” Quentin said. The specter of more planning passed shudderingly across his vision. He tried to sound firm. “I am _not_ doing any of this again.”

Eliot made a small noise of subdued agreement. After a quiet minute, though, he said speculatively, “We will have anniversaries, though—” and, before Quentin could even groan, rolled confidently over to make his case.


End file.
